


Monochrome

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Dark, Painting, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, graveyard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7878625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you're Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's child, you inherit not only the name, but scars too.</p><p>aka</p><p>things you shouldn't say in front of your children/parents. You might scare them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monochrome

As she looks out through the window, a vast, green meadow unfolds before her eyes, and behind it, a lush, green forest pulsing with life. People often remark that District 12 has never fully recovered from the war, but she doesn't believe it. In her eyes, her town gracefully bears her scars.

Just like her parents.

She always knew that her mother was Katniss Everdeen. She has heard the story through her childhood dozens of times. But not until the lesson on the Second Rebellion in school has she really realized that her mother was Katniss Everdeen.

She understands now. Why her mother can't sleep, sometimes. Why her father can't talk, sometimes. Why mr. Abernathy drinks. Why her mother won't let her go to the meadow.

She understands why on some days, mainly the Victory day, and during the Hunger Games memorial parade, her mother just sits in grandpa's old armchair with her head between her knees, empty eyes fixed on the wall.

Her brother can't understand. He clings to Mother's shoulder and begs her to talk to him, to look at him.

Rose has long since stopped. She knows that Mother won't.

'Mom.'

'Mom.'

'Mom.' her brother insists. Mother doesn't reply. She is staring blankly into space. The boy grows tired of being ignored and flinches his hand back from Mother as if he had been burned.

'Let her be, Nickey.' Rose remarks tiredly. It was one of the bad days. The ones where they couldn't be a normal family, and she would have to take care of him.

'But I don't get it.' he whines. 'She's completely normal one day, and tomorrow it's like she doesn't even love me.'

'Leave her alone, Nickey.' Rose repeats herself. She would not have this conversation, not today.

'I don't want to!' Nickey is on the brink of throwing a tantrum. 'It's not even the anniversary of their Games or the Victory day or anything! This is just the day some stupid president signed some stupid document and some stupid Capitol kids were killed! Big deal!'

Rose stares at the boy, eyes wide with horror. She eyes mother, who has snapped out and is doing the same.

Nick is only six. She would have to go easy on him.

'Come here, Nickey.' Katniss gestures for her son to sit at her knee. He trottles towards her and looks her dead in the eye with serenity beyond his years. 'Yes, mom?'

'On this day, twenty-two years ago, the rebels killed your aunt Prim.' the woman says without a hint of warmth in her tone.

'We had an aunt?' Nickey asks meekly? 'Why did the rebels kill her? Was she bad?'

'No, they didn't kill her because she was bad.' Mother gives the coldest smile. 'They killed her because they thought she wasn't important.'

'But...' Nickey struggles to grasp the foreign concept. 'The rebels were good.'

'No, they weren't.' Mother says. 'They weren't good. Dad wasn't good. Even I wasn't good.'

'Enough!' Rose can't hold it anymore. 'Stop it! You're scaring him!'

'She had the most beautiful blond hair, just like you.' Mother was starting to drift away again.

Rose could hear Dad's footsteps in the hallway.

'I did everything to protect her, but the world was beating her down. We killed her, Nickey, Dad and I.'

Dad's head peeked through the doorframe. His mouth was agape, his mind processing the image of the terrified boy on his wife's knees.

'We. Killed. Them. All.'

'Enough, Katniss!' Dad stormed into the room. He lifted his son into his arms and faced Mother's cold grey eyes. 'We'll have a chat later.'

Mother suddenly looked as if he had poured cold water on her. She stood frozen for a second, before retreating again into her own head.

Father flashed a happy grin at Nickey. 'Now, do you want to go into the town with me? I'll get you some candy!'

He carried him away, away from Mother, away from Rose.

  
***

Last year, Mother and Father took them into the Capitol, to the Graveyard of Heroes. They did it every year, even when Rose was little and scared and even though Mother would break down and cry in the airplane and scream ad Dad for making her do it.

Rose decided that she wasn't scared anymore. She was thirteen now, almost grown-up. Even though Mother was grown-up and still scared. Father was scared too, but he dodn't let it show. He smiled and bought them candy-canes on the airport.

The Graveyard of heroes is a large meadow. There is nothing but grass, and thousands upon thousands of white crosses. On each one, there is a name and a quote and a date or two. Rebels in the front, tributes in the middle, and civillians in the back.

Rose let go of Mother's hand. Katniss always wanted to do this alone, and she didn't have to ask anymore. Father drifted away to find his family. Nickey ran off. Rose found hrself alone with dead men.

Then names caught her attention. She knew these people, from Dad's stories and from school textbooks.

 _Beetee Latier_ , it said on the nearest cross, _and Wiress Latier. Died at sixty-six and forty-seven. Death is a highly labile variable._

Rose moved one cross to the left.

_Maggie «Mags» Fisher. Died at seventy-seven. Light at the end of a tunnel is sometimes hard to grasp, but standing on your shoulders, I feel safe._

Rose moved one cross to the left.

_Rue Finch. Died at twelve. Our lives are not measured in years, but in sorrow of people whose hearts we have touched._

Rose moved one cross to the left.

_Cinna Cornelius Naso. Died at nineteen. When you give all of yourself to others, you might find yourelf a happy man, instead of empty-handed._

Rose moved one cross to the left.

_Finnick Odair. Died at twenty-six. He is chasing serendipity._

She stopped. Something about the name stroke her as familiar, and she could vaguely remember a page in her parents' book where there was a small picture of a handsome, freckled man and a girl in a sea green wedding dress taken somewhere inside a bunker.

She felt someone's presence behind her. Mother always managed to creep up on her, no matter how alert she was. She had that sad look in her eyes, but Rose could see that she was still present.

'Who was he, mother?' she asked, pointing at the grave.

Katniss' eyes dimmed. There was a ruch of images in her brain: a hand offering a sugarcube, a fake, fake smile. A boy with the trident who grinned as he caught a silver parachute, and a sad echo of an old woman's laugh. A dark-haired girl with many scars fro whippings on her bare, pale back, and a pair of hands struggling to work on a rope that was too short for him to hang himself. A faint scent of roses and death. And then it was over.

'He was nobody, Rose. Absolutely nobody.' Mother said.

'But-'

'I never knew him at all.'

***

Dad is a painter, Rose knows it. He's still quite famous. He paints trees and flowers of their home district, and sometimes skyscrapers that tower over the Capitol. Sometimes, he paints horses, dark and glossy, scrunching on sugar and pulling carriages. More often than not, there are small, black birds all over the sky on all of his works.

Rose liked his paitings when she was a child. She liked the animals and the landscapes. Dad would smile and let her paint a bird in the corner of the painting. Then she would fell bad about herself, cause her bird wasn't as good as his.

'I used to be able to paint masterpieces.' Dad would say to amuse her. 'But I've gotten rusty.'

'Stop it dad.' Rose would giggle. 'They're beautiful!'

'You see, love, paintings, not eyes are mirrors of soul. Ask a man to draw something, and he will show you his mind.' he said to her once.

She had no idea.

One day, no one was home.

On the back of Dad's atelier, where he keeps his brushes and palette's, there are a few canvases covered with white sheets.

One day, she was curious. One day, she decided to take a look.  
The paintings were in color. Obviously old, because they were painted quickly and roughly, and not with grace Dad posesses today. There was a meadow in the middle of the woods, not soft, but wild, and what looked like an enormous golden horn in the middle. There was a painting of a girl, ready to shed blood, re-arranging knives on the inside of her jacket. There was a huge golden wolf with devious green eyes. There was mother, bloody and battered, sinking into a gray mist. Mother washing laundry on the riverside. Mother on fire, burning alive, face frozen in a scream of revenge.

Rose bolted out as quickly as she could.

Those paintings were filled with rage, youth and nightmares. Later, she realized that those were scenes from the Hunger Games. She realized something else.

Those were Dad's only paintings in color.

For the rest of his life, he painted in monochrome.

Greys, greys of old movies, greys of the horses' pelts, greys of Mother's eyes, greys of soot.

Greys of his soul.


End file.
